COPY OF MY FILM USER REVIEWS ORIGINALLY POSTED IN iMDB (imdb dot com) over the years under my(sumathyramesh-92949) profile as below:
I am a human. I love a good film. I am a limited person who can not watch movies in languages that I don't know; I think I'd be disrespectful to the film maker to give all my focus to the subtitles while watching the film with all but the tip of my eyes for the actual film.
In terms of being a canvas for self-reflection, cinema is to a society what poetry is to an individual. I have watched movies nearly all my life. I have grown as a person watching some movies; I had to grow to watch some difficult movies.
Cinema is a powerful medium; when used to tell the stories responsibly and truthfully, it has the power to bring about societal learning in a way no other medium can. Hence I intend to leave behind skeleton take-homes from my poems as potential film concepts in my personal webpages thaureyam dot com under resources over the coming years, in fond memory of my dear uncle who has distributed many a good cinema under the banner Chandrapraba (sp?) pictures from Coimbatore in '50s/'60s.
24NOVEMBER2025
Sembi
enga thoguthi
I am a human. I love a good film. I am a limited person who can not watch movies in languages that I don't know; I think I'd be disrespectful to the film maker to give all my focus to the subtitles while watching the film with all but the tip of my eyes for the actual film.
In terms of being a canvas for self-reflection, cinema is to a society what poetry is to an individual. I have watched movies nearly all my life. I have grown as a person watching some movies; I had to grow to watch some difficult movies.
Cinema is a powerful medium; when used to tell the stories responsibly and truthfully, it has the power to bring about societal learning in a way no other medium can. Hence I intend to leave behind skeleton take-homes from my poems as potential film concepts in my personal webpages thaureyam dot com under resources over the coming years, in fond memory of my dear uncle who has distributed many a good cinema under the banner Chandrapraba (sp?) pictures from Coimbatore in '50s/'60s.
2SEPTEMBER2025
Decoupled
Madhavan is good- like, Jack Nicholson good!!!
But shouldn't there be at least another three or four seasons to explore how Arya and Sruthi bring up the girl from under the same roof as decoupled couple??? Not sure if this was another series that paid an unnecessary price during the COVID years, if so, is there a better time than now to make them?
30JULY2025
Thalaivan Thalaivi
An essay in restraint
My husband was ambivalent about the nine pm start, given off late I'd been falling asleep half way through the best of movies if I start watching it after, say 7:30pm! But then it was clear from the very title scenes, it was a wasteful worry: the movie was so fresh and original in its approach and narration of an otherwise everyday family feud that it could have started at 12am and still kept us laughing and well entertained.
I am forced to make a concession to my self-imposed limit to only writing my experience on the movies that I am willing to give an unconditional 10- the movie was such a charmer and its hard to restrain myself having witnessed the essay Vijay wrote with his eyes on restrain- one decibel more in any of the dozens of scenes he expressed Agasaveeran, it would have tipped the movie to mediocracy; likewise one word from Nithya Menon as Vijay signed and handed her the divorce note pouring his hurt and inability, the movie would have crossed to the cliched ending.(how did she line her eyes with red holding her tears back, my God, is that talent?) A must watch!
P. S. Note to self- scored 8 'cos I am reserving 10s to distinguish trail blazers, as I see.
27JANUARY2025
Life is Beautiful
Let it be today
My husband brought home a DVD of life is beautiful a couple of years after its release. I am not sure if we watched it with our children at that time, but I distinctly recollect falling for it in a way that I took it to work to insist that my manager, a dear friend when he is not at his desk, watches it that very evening.
Several years later when I was pushed to a decision on how I would navigate my family over a difficult line, a question I wanted to talk to my friend but falling short as he was battling terminal cancer given less than a wk or so for his loved ones. Remembering our tear-stained appreciation of life is beautiful, I chose to toe a, not dissimilar line to Roberto. Perhaps a poor choice, because, years on there is still no resolution in sight, as with many an issue many a human - irrespective of their cultural lineage, are trying to resolve prioratising normalcy for their loved ones, left with nothing but their love and humour for defence.
Let it be today, Oh, let it be today, as the world remembers Auschwitz, 80 years after its liberation from injustices inflicted on unsuspecting civilians under the fogs of war, that we as humans resolve to evolve ourselves from the ties of what has been, and forge a path of reason, objectivity, fairness and a sincere intent towards a common culture of mutual respect as a necessary precursor for developing self-respect. Let it be today that we choose that path armed with truth and information accuracy, how ever uncomfortable it makes us, instead of paving our future with the century-old broken wounds and mistrust.
Let us retire our warfare as joy-rides and bring home our children, getting them to shed their uniforms.
Let it be today! 'cos, irrespective of your name, gender, lineage or theatre, there is a Roberto in each of us wanting the safety of our loved ones.
8SEPTEMBER2024
Raayan
as far as it takes
"How far would you go?" is a litmus question every leader worth his name would ask himself multiple times through out their lives, the answer defining and chiseling their character and shaping their lives, unique and exemplary in their own way for those who had chosen their line at toeing some one-else's line, a choice that is equally unique as that of the leader and worthy of respect and understanding.
My husband and myself sought out and watched the movie late last night after I had flicked away from it several times thinking I had already watched it- I won't entirely blame it on myself or its promoters for overloading my bandwidth with flickable uploads of trailers, songs, reviews, talk-shows and what nots, because, the designers of flickogrithms incorrectly reward behaviour that flicked-past promos as somehow the expected behaviour when the movie actually is ready for viewing.
My husband asked me this morning, how do you watch a movie that violent when you are fighting for non violence (Sumathy Ramesh, "zero harm" self-published, 2021). I told him, I always close my eyes through every violent scene, every time, and open them with all I have, because these movies are not so much about the violence, but about the people who don't have the choice to close their eyes when hit, hit hard or touched, touched inappropriately.
Raayan leaves me wondering, would the movie have conveyed its message better had it chosen, say Mahathma Ghandi or Manek Shaw as its hero instead of a no-namer sneaking a ride at the back of truck with his brothers leaning on his shoulder and baby in warps filling his arms as a teen ager to protect them from their family priest, only to do pretty much the same except, to protect what is left of his family from the police officer whose efforts to clean-up the place of violence by orchestrating more of what he was trying to stop.
It takes courage of the heart to portray the drive of an everyday human from the rungs of the society no one else has an eye for, assuming accountability for the responsibilities that was thrust on him unasked to exemplify "how far would he go" and answer "as far as it takes".
Violence is not the answer, but unless there are movies such as Raayan's to moderate the grand-standing of the polite society of its lofty morals, we will not know to tell the law makers from the law breakers nor the priests from the sinners, a necessary first step/acknowledgement of our own delusions before any effort to better the lives of other humans.
6DECEMBER2023
Killers of the Flower Moon
Glad to have shared 3 hrs and 24mnts of ~438000hrs of Mollie's life
... I wish I had the opportunity share more of it! It wasn't long, if it was, I didn't have the time to notice. I didn't have time to notice because there was DiCaprio oozing his character every which way, finding the Osage land, weaving through its 20's streets, wooing Mollie, fearing Hale, defining Anna, loving Mollie, loosing his little girl, loathing Hale, and loving himself, yes I din't have time to notice the time. And then there was DeNero, charming as ever, even through his blatantly cruel stance on all other lives. But there was also Lilly Gladstone- a name I never knew till now, and a name that'll get me to the theatres on day one from now on... She is so beautiful, beautiful through her reservation, through her apprehension, through her faith, through her respect, through he love, through her fear, through her grief, through her joy, through her resolve, through her courage, through her loss, through her sickness, through her helplessness, through her determination, through he discovery, and finally through her crisp anger as she got up from her chair in one swift move turned her back walked out on DiCaprio.
And I didn't even have time to notice there was a director...
1AUGUST2023
Oppenheimer
One-off concession to my own rule to stick to perfect scores
I am contemplating a biopic.. my own. At 62, I have grown larger than I could have, had I had a hurdle free life much larger than I could have envisaged when I arrived in a new country at 25. And I was researching movies that I would rate 10, or some thing I could watch over and again and still find domethong new to take home. And kept a log of my research through imdb reviews.
Oppenheimer doesn't quite cut it there, and I want to document it, just keeping me honest in my own objectivity at this point in time, no more, no less.
It's hard to place my hand what but the movie left me with several unresolved data points, unintentionally, that its unacceptable to me given there were so many hours to resolve them.
28JULY2023
Pannaiyarum Padminiyum
another film for the all-times-classic rerelease series...
The movie is an essay on the ever-contemporary evolution of every human through the alternating steps of possession and release we climb through, energising while possessing and growing as we give until we are so comfortable with our position with our possessions that the joy of giving is all that's left. Vijay is a natural in portraying powerful emotions through understated flicks of eyelids and it was a joy to see him scale his insecurities and grow with a crisp look here and another there. I started watching the movie thinking I was going to finish it loving the Padmini, not too dissimilar to my experience with the Red balloon(English) or Cycle(Marathi). And I was overwhelmed with the love of the people instead, as they projected their own love for each other on to the car and grew, growing me. The casting is so beautiful- making me want to visit the little village even if only to see a little yellow flower fall gently on to the place where Pannayar's Padmini stood.
Clearly another film for the all-times-classic rerelease series, lest most of us who missed watching it the first time are left out.
17MAY2023
The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir
One of the most beautiful tragedies I have watched on the screens
I toyed with whether I should click "yes" or "no" for the Does this review contain spoilers- and chose "No" for the following reasons: I want you to find and watch it, and to the best of my knowledge on the intent of the spoiler alert, viz., will it diminish your enjoyment of the movie, and the genre ascribed to the movie is different to my take on it, that it is a tragedy, a very beautifully portrayed tragedy that doesn't impart any of its hurts on the viewer, who, in all probability is watching it to wind down from the pressures of life by engulfing an hour or so of their lives in the life of those portrayed on the screen- not unlike Aza's tricks to distract you momentarily into believing in something more than what your rational reasoning can derive for you.
The understated tragedy in the screen play and an equally understated depths Dhanush's performance in restraining tear-jerks binds to your own depths like every well made tragedy; there are many a children all over the world, not necessarily just in India, not unlike like the juveniles committed to detention on the verge of four years of their God given lives by virtue of their "chance" placing them in situations they didn't bargain for needing Aza's narration of an extraordinary journey -despite it's remotest of possibilities, to be lured to the classrooms. Chances are, Aza pulled of his magic on himself to turn the tragedy life dealt him into a comedy for his listeners/audiences.
One for my books on unforgettable movies, along the lines of "life is beautiful".
How did I miss it all these years???
4MAY2023
Thalaikoothal
A humble tribute to the many who care; a humbling experience perhaps, to all who think they care
Its an incredibly beautiful movie communicating an incredibly difficult human attribute viz., love, with incredible simplicity. Love to those who haven't loved and lost may not be the same as those who have loved, lost and taken years to regroup wondering was there anything else that they missed which would have prevented their loss. I mean, the multi-billion dollar medtech and pharma industry owes a significant share of its bottomline to the heart strings of the later. They would put their own life and that of the rest of their loved ones on hold ceasing to count their days and months as they wait for that one bat of the eyelid or one twitch of the non-existent curl of the lip. And the value those who have loved and lost place making their loved ones find THEIR OWN expression, even for a moment longer can not be measured in rupees or dollars.
I loved the movie: the unpretentious care the family bestowed on the bedridden with the unobtrusive intertwining of the flow of his story made me proud to share the same lineage, a thamizh ponnu. The subtle cross reference introduced by the portrayal of the intact swallowing instinct of a fellow villager in a not too dissimilar condition to the dependency on enteral-tubes for nourishment of the hero was truly humbling; it made me wonder if the design of the enteral-nutritional aids could do more to reduce the burden of the carer in explicit withdrawing the provision of nourishment indicating debilitation of natural expression.
3MAY2023
The Great Dictator
How do we get The Great Dictator into the kindergarten curriculum globally?
I have never been much of a Charlie Chaplin fan; born and bred in the cinema era where audio had been well integrated into the artform, the visuals, the dialogues and the music augmenting and enhancing each other to established heights in mass communication of the producer's intent, tI didn't have the maturity to seek out silent movies. I also didn't know Charlie Chaplin made non-silent movies- until yesterday when I chanced on it in the oscars-category of one of our free-to-air on-demand-channels choosing to exercises my every nerve fibre while my husband was engaged in a, let us say, limited form of exercise, choosing to sweat out to the instructions of an online yoga teacher. My nerve are still quivering from the impact of the opening scene where a humble barber-turned a overnight front-liner on the theatre of war leans on his humour to plough through the moment, as his line of command hands down one weapon/control of a war-equipment that he barely understood, let alone had the mastery to deploy.
And I still have some hundred odd minutes to chew.
3MAY2023
The Great Dictator
How do we get The Great Dictator into the kindergarten curriculum globally?
I have never been much of a Charlie Chaplin fan; born and bred in the cinema era where audio had been well integrated into the artform, the visuals, the dialogues and the music augmenting and enhancing each other to established heights in mass communication of the producer's intent, tI didn't have the maturity to seek out silent movies. I also didn't know Charlie Chaplin made non-silent movies- until yesterday when I chanced on it in the oscars-category of one of our free-to-air on-demand-channels choosing to exercises my every nerve fibre while my husband was engaged in a, let us say, limited form of exercise, choosing to sweat out to the instructions of an online yoga teacher. My nerve are still quivering from the impact of the opening scene where a humble barber-turned a overnight front-liner on the theatre of war leans on his humour to plough through the moment, as his line of command hands down one weapon/control of a war-equipment that he barely understood, let alone had the mastery to deploy.
And I still have some hundred odd minutes to chew.
25OCT2022
Thiruchitrambalam
and ten out of ten for megam karukkada penne penne
Text: A very beautiful expression of friendship, as Dhanush explores his encounter with an old flame opening himslef up to his trusted friend Nithya Menon, isolating the respite he experienced from his parched outlook on his own life, shedding his burden, so beautifully as mannai thooral theendum munne vasam parkiren- gentlest of pleasures nature bestows on arid land, anyone who is human can feel. The refreshing choreography, the absolutely balanced music and the softest of lighting worked wonders, all understated lest they hurt the rain drop descending in Dhanush's heart. Another one for the ages..
23OCT2022
Amadeus
Can they re-release Amadeus, not unlike M6 rebuild- with ZERO CHANGE?
And I watched the video release of Amadeus for the second tie this week end on my not-so-little TV monitor. The year I was blown away by it the first time eludes me- I didn't understand several dialogues, I was constantly interrupting my children with a what did he say/what does that mean... I couldn't comprehend Salieri, I couldn't understand Mozart's high pitched burst of laughter - I just wasn't ready for something as powerful as what Shaffer was trying to communicate. I didn't have the life experience to feel the fibre in Mozart's joy as he put the bow to the string at 4, his innocence to miss the droop of Salieri's cheeks when he checked if he had thought of the alternate phrase that might have worked better at their first direct encounter, his crisp dismissal of Katerina to be there for his girl at a time of her need, the unrestrained jubilance of his creativity that the director could barely cut even when he is not actually composing, his humility all the way to the end, where he say was ashamed to have missed Salieri's appreciation of his works... Oh I have to see it in the theatres again!!! How much does it cost to screen movies?? I wish I had grown up enough to have learnt more about film distribution from my uncle before he passed!!!!!
10OCT2022
Ponniyin Selvan: Part I
Costume designers and make-up artistes would have made Kalki and Maniyam proud
Writing to share my joy in watching a period block buster, only made possible by cutting edge CGI seamlessly integrated with exceptional cinematography in choice locations, portraying one of the key works of one of the most well respected Tamil novelist of all times. Fortunately I hadn't read the book and didn't have any preconceived notion or expectation to diminish my enjoyment. I was ready to give away the best actor in the lead role to Karthi, then my husband explained to me he'll have to settle for best supporting actor because, Vandiyathevan is not the hero of Ponniyin Selvan! Oh well !!!
10NOV2021
Jai Bhim
Most powerful medium, explored to its fullest! Well, it made me sign-up on imdb!!!
Film is probably the most powerful medium to date, to get someone you have never seen or known to see what you see as you see it. To realise the full potential of its power, you need a message that is strong and abiding, you need a life experience exploring the full breath of the message, you need impeccable technical proficiency that is unobtrusive, you need uncompromising artistic integrity that understands every silver pixel in every frame is as important as every other- that they paint the one picture over the whole span of the film, you need adherence to truth as expressed through the life of the characters, you need minimal script to render the communication language independent, you need understated music scores enabling you to pack time, you need background music to to string your scenes seamlessly, you need artistes who shine by their effortless restrain, enabling every other artiste bring-out their best, and you need a story that every one of your audience can resonate with either through their own direct experience or through indirect experience from others they know or headline news or history.
Jai Bhim ticks every box. The last movie that ticked every box for me was Blood Diamond. The oscars missed the chance to see what was shown in 2006- here's an opportunity to correct.